My Story

I was born in Tokyo to a Chinese family, and honestly, most of my early childhood was spent running around outside, playing with friends, and watching TV. We travelled between China and Japan a lot. Music snuck in happily around the edges. I picked up the drums at four in China, sang in the school choir, and even learned the melodica in Japan.

I didn't come to the piano until I was seven, in Shanghai. Largely, I'll admit, because I wanted to wear pretty dresses. My parents, I'm sure, were relieved I traded in the drums.

What started as a costume decision did not, at first, become a love story. In those early years my parents could barely get me to sit at the piano for more than fifteen minutes at a time. But somewhere between that tiny town in southern China and the slightly bigger one of Shanghai, I fell for the music itself, and for the adrenaline of being on stage.

When we immigrated to Vancouver, Canada when I was nine, the piano came with me and became my constant companion through all the changes that followed. Without quite realizing it, I couldn't imagine my life without music.

Nearly two decades and a few countries later, I've had the unbelievable privilege of studying music at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto, The Juilliard School in New York, the Tianjin Juilliard School, and the University of British Columbia. The path continues at Cornell, where I'm pursuing doctoral studies with Xak Bjerken.

What I still care about most is the same thing that hooked me as a kid: music's ability to transcend and connect across culture, language, or generation, through sound. I also vlog and blog about the meandering, occasionally absurd experience of being a musician in this day and age.